Gov. Wolf's lawlessness: Break out the handcuffs

Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf presented his 2016-17 budget on Tuesday. He claimed it “provides a clear path for a promising future for our state.” Never mind that it's just another in a long line of Democrat spending blueprints that swears the Keystone State can be taxed to prosperity.

By Republican estimates, the new budget would increases taxes by $3 billion and filch another $1,200 annually from the pockets of the average Pennsylvania family. This is what “progressives” call “progress.”

And never mind, too, that the commonwealth still doesn't have a completed 2015-16 budget, the product of a gubernatorial hissy fit. Which leads us to a hardly semantic (but, admittedly, hyperbolic) point:

Why wasn't the governor led away in handcuffs when he entered the House chamber to deliver his newest budget plan?

Outrageous, you say? Not really, considering the grave damage Mr. Wolf has done to the letter and to the spirit of the Pennsylvania Constitution. For you see, we find it abundantly clear — following a Monday legislative hearing, and because there's no final 2015-16 spending plant — that the governor and his Treasury Department are spending money in violation of the state charter.

The Wolf administration chortles at the charge, calling it the stuff of “tea party extremists.”

Imagine that — fealty to the rule of law is “extremism” to this bunch of cracked nuts. Perhaps the need for handcuffs isn't hyperbolic at all.

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